Two weeks since I’ve updated my blog – doesn’t mean I haven’t been running

There’s one little problem when you commit to maintaining a blog with updates on your charity and running exploits – work. Forget the commitment of hours to long runs, the social agenda, the recovery sessions, even though they eat into your limited waking hours, they pale into insignificance when you have a full time job to hold down. Anyways I’ve managed to find a quick 30 minutes to update you on the past fortnight.

Training

Tuesday –  Training program says 5 lots of 400m sprints with a 1 min recovery walk between each. How easy is that going to be? Under 3kms, surely a piece of cake. What it actually means is run as fast as you can for a lap of an Aussie Rules footy oval, walk slowly, run as fast as you can again (but slower than the 1^st time as you’re still stuffed from the 1^st one), walk slower, speed up again, walk even slower, speed up again if you dare, walk walk walk maybe even add 10 secs to the recovery, go fast again even though you need to stop to throw up, hold it in you only have a couple of 100 metres to go, stop short, double over, wonder why you chose bananas for breakfast, hope it’s still dark enough for none of the locals to recognise you, stagger for a minute, plan on doing a 5 min recovery jog, actually jog for about 2 minutes and then through in the towel. Go home re-eat the breakfast you lost, shower, feel nauseous for an hour or two and then complain about sore legs.

Thursday – An easy 50 min run. Clocked 7 kilometres at 5.20am so probably could have travelled a bit further if I could have seen more than 5 metres in front of myself. Pitch black and about 4 degrees Celsius, but the added advantage of no passing cars as everybody is still smart enough to be snug in their beds. Walk home with the added advantage of spotting the people heading to the running track, safe in the knowledge that they still have to commence their run, I’m all done.

Saturday – Not part of the training plan, but how can I knock back a ParkRun when the kids have a soccer “bye” and I (again) have a free Saturday morning? The long runs, sprints, hills etc are obviously weaving their magic as I clocked a personal best (that’s more commonly known as “a PB” for insiders) of 30.09 for the 5 kms. Only a couple of weeks ago I was lamenting if I’d ever break the 30 minute barrier – under 6 mins per km for a sustained distance. Well nearly there, if I’d only been at the start of the pack at the start I could well have made up those lost 10 seconds!!!! Maybe next time.

Now is probably a good time to show how training three times a week can improve your times, and I’ve noticed a considerable improvement in my 5km times since I’ve been running 10km+ in training. Below is a history of my ParkRuns – the same course and distance every week so a fair indicator of the improvements (although there are obviously weather impacts they wouldn’t be significant enough to slow me down almost a full kilometre).

14/1/12 – 36.51

28/1/12 – 35.53

4/2/12 – 35.15

18/2/12 – 34.08

25/2/12 – 36.05

3/3/12 – 34.07

10/3/12 – 33.45

12/5/12 – 36.54

23/6/12 – 35.48

7/7/12 – 32.48

28/7/12 – 32.01

4/8/12 – 30.39

11/8/12 – 32.30 (hungover something shocking)

18/8/12 – 30.09

Sunday – long run day – as per my last instalment I add 2kms to each long run, so this week it was 18kms. Not a lot to add here – a slow slog for 18 clicks, sore legs, sore body, sore shoulders, about 2 x 50 metre walks up a hill when I got to laps 14 and 15 of the 1.2km track. Eventually done and a slow stagger home. Averaged 7 mins per click so was happy with that. Surely I can now run a further 3 kilometres and finish a half marathon. Don’t know about a further 24 kilometres though – still have 5 months to get my head around that.

Later Sunday I had that “euphoric” I’ve been for a long run feel, that’s the moment when you decide to enter more official events, or put your name down for some obscure fund raising activity (anyone up for getting their head shaved or maybe a few rounds of boxing?). What I did was made the first commitment to running the Hobart Marathon in January…well I booked the flights, next step is somewhere to sleep and then on 20 September (the date entries open) I’ll be putting in my first ever marathon entry…..small steps but the commitment is there, may as well run it, I’ll be in town.

Tuesday – 3 km time trial. Was still a tad stiff and sore from the 18 km run on Sunday but managed to punch out 3 in 18.17. I was happy with that as it wasn’t that long ago it would have taken me 20 minutes. This one it was at 5.25am (so pitch black again) and a shocking head wind down one side of the oval with no tail wind on the other side as it’s protected by the grandstand. Finished that had my breakfast and headed into town for a 7.30am blood donation appointment. Overall a productive morning. Which I followed up with about 10 pints of beer that evening at a work team function.

Wed – Saturday – decided it was a week to take it easy. Had a chiro appointment on the Wednesday night as my back was playing up, probably from the long run on Sunday, all through my shoulders and neck area. It’s now looking as though it will be a regular fortnightly visit throughout this journey so add in the costs for treatment to the multiple pairs of shoes, gels, creams for tender spots, anti-inflams for soreness, band-aids and creams for blisters, apparently you need expensive socks too, all up this commitment is going to cost me to equivalent of a herd of goats and a well for a village in some third world nation. That’s not even counting air fares, accommodation and entry fees!!!!

Sunday - Planning for a long run was thrown out the window as I was invited to a fun event through the streets of Melbourne. The Royal Melbourne Zoo as part of their 150 year celebrations have arranged for 50 baby elephant sculptures (modelled on Melbourne Zoo’s own Mali) to be decorated by artists and scattered throughout the greater Melbourne area. Our own ParkRun organiser arranged a “run” to visit (and photograph) all 50 sculptures. This trek would cover approx 25 kilometres and take about 3.5 hours.

Here’s the honest bit – all the “acceptances” for the event run marathons (well nearly all of them), I’d run a maximum of 18 kms in my life, I’d had a lazy week, they run fast (well faster than me), so I decided to join them about 2 hours in at elephant number 22 and I’d take in the last 28 sculptures.

What a great time I had (even if I was the only one praying for red traffic lights so I could get a breather). All up 11.1 kilometres for me, taking in a few hills, busy Melbourne streets, all ending in a coffee and a meal over looking the Yarra River. So here’s a tip, you can make any long run interesting, instead of lap after lap, just add in a challenge, a few friends and suddenly you have an event.

This week is a few slow training runs culminating in a charity event for Kate and Turia, ultra marathon runners who were caught in a bush fire in the El Questro Wilderness Park last year. On Saturday, myself and 12 of my work colleagues are running two laps of the famous Tan track in Melbourne (7.4kms) to raise funds for the ongoing living and medical expenses for these amazing girls. For more of their story go to http://www.ultraspirit.com.au/the-story/ or to donate to our fund raising visit http://www.everydayhero.com.au/team_cgu CGU Insurance will be matching us $ for $ in our fund raising (up to $1,000) so whatever amount you can spare will be doubled before it gets to help out Kate and Turia. I’ll have an update on the event in next week’s blog instalment.

Can I turn a boring week of running into something you may laugh at?

Bit of a boring week for you really, nothing outside of the ordinary, work hard, play hard and train hard.

Effectively worked 5 days, had a seriously hard session on the Friday night at a couple of local venues and ran with an illegal blood alcohol content the following morning. That was about it - no highlights, no events that will make the front page of the local newspaper, nothing of note....

I suppose I haven’t really covered off the sort of training I have been doing, other than the social events I get involved in so given it was a bit of a monotonous week I’ll go into a bit more running training detail (YAWN!!! – Actually don’t do that you’ll use up a bit of energy and you’ll need all you have to follow me on this journey!!!)

Now THAT'S a hill

Tuesday – ran some hills – now what that means is you find a place (which is not that easy in the sand belt region of Melbourne) with a hill, not a speed hump or a slight 2 or 3 metre rise but a HILL, not a mountain as we don’t really have many of those in Australia but something in between a rocky outcrop or escarpment and a small bower bird mound. Once you’ve found this hill, the idea is for you to RUN up it, yep I’ll repeat that you RUN up it. Now no scenes from Rocky once you’ve got to the top, you’re not Edmund Hillary, even though you may feel like you’re on top of the world (that could be due to the head spins), you’ve simply run up a hill - one single lonesome hill. Now here is the interesting bit, you WALK back down that hill and then you run up it AGAIN – no point in getting out of breath only once, you need to do it a few times to make sure that slight pain in your chest is really there. So this is the exercise, you run the hard bit and walk the easy bit - not the other way around. Now get this….last Tuesday I did that TEN times, the amount of distance I covered would have been enough to constitute a change in time zones but all up I’d moved 300 metres up and down the single hill. 

For those of you who have never ridden a horse, here’s a tip, you find you have muscle groups that you didn’t know existed, generally on the inside of your thighs as you've been gripping the bejeezers out of some poor hack’s rib cage, now with hill running it is pretty much the same. You have these muscles in your legs that you didn’t know were there, or if you knew they were there they were being used for strange things like gripping a jar of pickles as you attempt to prise off the lid. Here’s a secret for those who are yet to run up (and walk down) hills – it flippin’ hurts and the more you do it the more it hurts. Apparently this hill running will teach me to run further (who thought of that??? I would have thought I'd just run further - maybe my logic's a bit simple).

I have this book (I’ll talk about it at some later stage) where they tell you that if you want to run a stupid distance (like a marathon) you need to conquer your inner demons, or go slay a dragon or fight the Beelzebub within or some such self-help jargon, and how you do that is you have a mantra about wanting to be at one with the hills, or make the hills your friend, or go hug a hill or some other new age hippy rubbish. (I am exaggerating but you get what I mean), so I tried their method, and I cannot believe it, I actually enjoyed running up the hills. That’s not to say I enjoyed the rest of the day where I was walking around like Quick Draw McGraw, but the hill running I conquered and I felt proud.

Next day was a boring flat 40 min job to stretch out the legs from the Himalayan encounter I had undertaken the day before. Nothing too interesting just a slow steady 7 mins per km jog. Skipped Friday’s session as I didn’t want to dehydrate myself before I hit the bars of Melbourne and worked my way through, 3 or four glasses of nice wine, a couple of pints of average keg beer and half a dozen tequila shooters. All in preparation for a Saturday morning ParkRun event.

Am I still drunk???

Now I must admit I was a smidgin hungover on the Satdi morn, I think a few people in my slipstream could well have fainted from the stale alcoholic fumes, and the black coffee after the run did wonders for the palpitations. Having said all that I did manage 32.30 for the 5kms which I reckon is not too bad considering I was swaying the whole way as though I had an inner ear disorder.

Sunday – long run day, I’ve been adding 2kms per week to my long runs and this week pumped out 16 clicks (yep that’s 10 miles) with only a few short drink breaks (20 seconds at a fountain would be my guess) AND I ran it at the venue with the HILL, but this time I ran up the hill, around the track, down the hill on the opposite side, around a flat bit a bit more and then up the hill again. So from memory I conquered a further 13 or so hills (I legit lost track of how many laps I ran, I can’t recall if it was 13 or 12 as half way I was saying 7 more to go….7 more to go….or is it 6 more to go…6 more to go…no it’s 7 more to go….or actually I’ve just finished a lap….so did I just finish 7 or do I have 7 to go??? Get my drift???). That night I watched the Olympic Men's Marathon on the tv, safe in the knowledge that I'd run over 35% of the distance that same morning, I'm an expert in these running things now, should have had me commentating! Could have taught Eddie Ego Magpie a thing or two.  Anyway, after a boring week I can tell you, I love them there hills. One day I’ll tell you about wind – now that is one mean little demon to conquer, cause that one you don’t know that he’s waiting around the next corner, ready to stuff you right up…..

Dry July over – so what’s next? Get on the sauce and run some more….

So I successfully made it through July without an alcoholic beverage, in most cultures that wouldn’t be seen as much of an achievement. In Australia, where we celebrate each minor milestone with another ale, that is close to climbing K2. I’ll put some perspective on this…..”Mate, had a win today…..got to work without a train delay and then the cute barista asked me if I had a good weekend….wanna go for a beer to celebrate?” or “I hear the boys are playing Greece in a qualifying water polo match, if we win we are a chance of making the quarters…wanna beer to go watch?” or “I heard they upped the tax on alcopops??? What does that mean??? Wanna a discuss over a slammer or two?” These are general lift conversations that you would hear any day of the week in this country. There’s no “I’m feeling a bit tense, would you like to go to a yoga class” or “I think today’s been a bit tough, I’ll be leaving a bit early to have a quick meditation session”. Not our thing here in Oz. So how it works is, 31 days off the sauce is heralded as the equivalent of finishing AND understanding James Joyce’s Ulysses – it just don’t happen.

So what does a red blooded male who has given up the beverages for a full month (for charity) do when his time is up? Get straight back on it of course. A couple of quick ones on the 1^st, just to prime myself for the annual staff awards night the following night, where you drink free beer for approx.. 9 hours until you think you may end up indulging in an inappropriate conversation with Human Resources. So given I’m not your average red blood male, I kept a lid on it and only drank for 8 hours solid on the Thursday – and felt heaps better for it. Photo evidence on the blog? Not going to happen. But I do have a few stashed away in the photo archives, just in case HR are coming after me...

What’s this got to do with charity? Dunno. What’s it got to do with running? Dunno (although the carb loading – that’s my excuse – did help me to a brand new personal best for the 5km run on Saturday where I finished in 30.39!!!).

All up we raised $695 for the Royal Melbourne Hospital cancer patients so very happy to have done my bit (along with an anonymous team mate) by doing something for someone else.

Here’s another “charity” tip – not one you’d usually call charity, but one that any person (within limits) can do. On Monday I headed off to our local blood bank and donated blood plasma. Costs you nothing, helps heaps of people and all up it costs you 1 hour of your healthy life and a needle prick. Not any inconvenience at all – in the grander scheme of being able to assist people with cancer, children with clotting diseases, burns victims, people undergoing emergency surgery, it’s not a lot to ask. And this specific day, all I did was set the alarm clock for 5am instead of 6am – although probably not considered as “charity” it is something that you can give and it costs you nothing.

Running this week – as above did a new pb for the 5kms, that was after a 50 min run on the Tuesday, slow and steady it was after the 14 odd clicks I did on the Sunday, another 50 mins on the Thursday, a quick (get drenched) 5 kms on the Saturday and another “long run” of 14.32 on the Sunday. All of these were slow and steady, no speed runs or no hills….all bar the Saturday ParkRun. This one I amazingly cruised along for the first 2 clicks at 6 min pace and realised I was going okay so thought I’d just continue (what’s three more kilometres to a bloke who punched out 14 only six days before?) all was going to plan until the 4.5km mark when the heavens opened – now we are not talking a light misty rain that the English get, nor a hot tropical dump that you get in Asia or Florida or far North Australia, we’re talking similar volume to a tropical region but similar temperature to penguin’s bum. Did it make me run faster? Dunno, but it did make me gracious that I wasn’t wearing a white t-shirt.

All up a 34km week and I still yet to get to my rants about running hills, conquering Mephistopheles, crossing the River Styx and more – I’ll keep those for the journey ahead…. 

Dying days of Dry July, a couple of other charitable events and another week of training

I’ve remained alcohol free for over 28 days and as a team one other work collegue and myself have managed to raise $675 in sponsorship for the Royal Melbourne Hospital Cancer wards, it’s amazing how people will give you money when they know they don’t have to buy you a drink. With my end of month funds from Book Depository affiliate sales to still come we may crack the $700 mark yet. A huge thanks to all our sponsors, you can see their messages of encouragement or drop a few dollars our way at our fundraising web page at https://www.dryjuly.com/team/djerscgu.

The hardest part this week was the thank you lunch put on by my boss at an Italian restaurant where bottles of very nice Chianti were being offered. Back in 2000 I spent part of my honeymoon in a small villa in the wonderful village of Loro Chiuffena, on the Chianti outskirts, and every time I see a bottle of wine with the black rooster or pink/purple neck tie my mouth does water for the sangiovese taste. Geepers I’m making my bloody mouth water just writing this!!! But I did stick strong, having a couple of Chinotto’s and lemonatas, with my spaghetti. I had to follow that up with a team event at a local venue known for its overpriced drinks, atrocious service, staff with more body ink than your usual suspect but is popular due to its proximity to work (ie. It’s in the same building), where I got a soda water (although I’d ordered tonic) for the bargain basement price of $3.50 from a bloke who apparently speaks English but either his accent is that strong or his piercings interfere with his lip movement as I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. On my bike early as even though it can be entertaining, watching colleagues have a ball on the sauce is not really my idea of a great night out.  So all up, I’ve just about lasted a month (would be a month if it was February) without the truth serum and I’m a strong possibility to back it up for quite a while longer.

For people who don’t know where (or how) to start with helping out a local charity, here’s a simple idea for you. At work we arranged a morning tea on Friday for National “Stress Down” Day, an event organised to raise funds for Lifeline who provide crisis support and suicide prevention services, they do ask you to wear your pyjamas or slippers, we didn’t go that far as we thought the office “casual clothes Friday” policy might be breached having a bunch of professionals sitting around in flannelette jimjams. Quite a number of people brought in some home baked goodies and with a gold coin donation to taste them we managed to raise $284.20 for the cause. Easy to arrange, and effective if you can get 10/15 people to bake and 50 or 60 people to come along and eat. More info on the Lifeline services can be found at http://www.lifeline.org.au/

Another event that quite a few of us are getting behind is Ultra Spirit, a 7.6km Fun Run, two laps of the Tan a running track around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens. The event is being staged to raise funds for Kate Sanderson and Turia Pitt, two girls tragically burnt in bush fires while taking part in a 100km ultra marathon in the Kimberly Desert last year. Fund raised will go to the girls to help them with their vast ongoing medical and living costs. Full details of the girls courage and the horrific journey they have gone through can be seen at  http://www.ultraspirit.com.au/. At this stage we have at least 5 runners taking part as a team and are hoping to get it up to 10 or so as our work place has agreed to match our fund raising $ for $ so the more we raise the better it is for Kate and Turia. If you’re interested in participating or donating, let me know or simply visit the event website mentioned above or our fundraising page at http://www.everydayhero.com.au/team_cgu. Personally, I’ll donate September’s book sales commission (5% of anything you at Book Depository if you use the link on the right hand side of this blog) to this cause.

Onto the running, Training program said a 3km time trial Tuesday, 30 min run Wed and Friday and a one hour 15 min run on Sunday. So I did the time trail Tuesday (down 9 secs since my last one only two weeks prior), jogged 40 mins on Wednesday, 5.31kms and participated in ParkRun (5kms) on Saturday. ParkRun was a must this week as it was an Olympic themed run, everyone dressing up and having fun and I was fortunate enough to win one of the best dressed prizes for my ridiculous USA outfit. The morning was a scream with flags galore, fake torches, my “I run 100kms for a hobby” buddy wearing a massive set of Olympic rings (as you do when you run 5kms in 30 mins!!!), a Seb Coe lookalike, boxing kangaroos and more. There were laughs all round, a great sense of camaraderie and this all lead to a fun morning being had by all, including the people out for a Saturday stroll a number of who cheered us on and stopped to watch 67 colourful idiots enjoying themselves. I also ran a personal best of 32.01 for the 5 clicks so am slowly closing in on that 30 min barrier. If you are up for a 5km weekly run, where you can run slowly and improve slowly you should check out the ParkRun website, they have free timed events all over the globe. A great way to get started, fitter and to have fun at the same time!!!

Sunday a 14km long run – as you would do on a Sunday. Was talked into a “3 laps of Albert Park” long run by a couple of the ParkRunners. Mr “100km for fun” man arrived about 5 mins after myself looking a bit tired – turns out he’d already done 28 kms, all part of a cunning plan clock up a full marathon distance for the morning. We were joined by two others and they set off at a brisk 6 min per km pace (I was planning 7 min k’s – this was not a day for personal bests it was a day for a long steady run). Needless to say after three kilometres I let them disappear into the distance and dropped it back a notch. One lap in (close to 5 kms) we’d lost one to a hammy strain and one had dropped the pace back a bit to keep up with me and keep me motivated.  I was plugging along in my zone, two laps in I was hurting and my escort was off again trying to run down the leader, my legs were tight, but I gave myself a mental jolt “less than a single ParkRun distance to go” and away I plugged.

When I hit the 10km mark I was pumped, certain I’d run a personal best for that distance and this was a training run. Head went up, smile appeared and the “four k’s to go, four k’s to go” chant began. Another kilometre down and I purposely listened to the birds tweeting away, “if they’re happy so am I”, clocked up one more and it had become the furthest I had run without a break, one more and the I was joined by another ParkRunner who had put in an earlier 26kms or so (as you do on a Sunday!!!) who made me feel good as he was SPENT, 200 metres further up the path the breakaways came wandering towards me to encourage me home. I was in the zone, wasn’t stopping 600 metres or so out, so off I trotted. Made the finish area clocking up 14.19 kms in 1:40.06. Later discovering I was 1 second UNDER a ten kilometre personal best….oh well maybe next week.

Not a lot of laughs this week just a standard training effort. Maybe next week something of note will happen that will give you a giggle. But I’m pretty proud, here’s a bloke who could not run more than 200 metres now running (slowly mind you) 14 clicks without a break (a couple of water stops of 15/20 secs I don’t count as “breaks”) and I think I’m well on track for my first half marathon in 11 weeks’ time – only need to increase today’s distance by a further 50% surely that’s possible.

The latest week – week eight of a twenty week half marathon training plan

The third article of the Geneva Convention states that “persons taking no active part in hostilities….should be treated humanely and that the following actions are prohibited….torture”.

Now I’m not talking about my month off the alcohol for the Royal Melbourne Hospital, this allegory (see I’m talking symbolically here) relates to my running training.

Am I stretching the boundaries by thinking that I am not taking part in any hostilities, therefore should not be subjected to torture? Seriously peoples, who in their right mind would participate in a “10 minute warm up jog” AND THEN the actual training? Tuesday I was advised to do the warm up and then 6 lots of 500 metre sprints, with a 1 minute rest between each and Friday three lots of 1km sprints with a one minute rest. Let me ask you a simple question…who in their right mind warms up for 10 minutes and then “sprints” for one kilometre? And if you could sprint that far who then rests for a measly 60 seconds and then attempts to do it again? And then AGAIN???? So taking into account my ample girth, I pushed out 6 lots of 400 metre “sprints” (well as fast as I could go) with a 2 minute rest – and still on the 6^th one I was close to stopping to bring up my meagre breakfast. Friday? 800m solid with two minute walking rest. Feeling nauseous all day is not one of the aims of this program.

But that is not the worst of it. Friday, I did my run after work. A new moon was about so the place watch pitch black, I was alone in the whole park as nobody else in their right mind would be out sprinting on a cold night, let alone a Friday. I can 100% swear this was the FIRST Friday night run that I had done in my whole life. That night is generally reserved for a beer or two after work, which quickly turns into three, then an SMS to the wife saying “won’t be much longer”, a quick one for the road, a further SMS….”still here don’t bother cooking for me”…..then a quick round for the road and a late arrival home to find an arrow pointing to the spare room. At least my beloved is kind enough to leave my pillow there, no point me turning on all the lights in the house to get my bearings. So all up Dry July and this running caper had me home early, running in the cold, sober and questioning my sanity.

It’s not all discouraging I did go for a 4km light jog on Thursday night and that was pleasant and a good mental time out from the day.

But back to the link to “torture”. My adviser who runs 100km events for fun, said I should head out on Sunday (long run day) for a 12km run and if I was feeling good at the end, walk a km and then run one more. Well I wasn’t feeling that good, so I just pumped out the 12kms with three drink breaks (too short to rate a mention) with a slow steady walk home.

Here’s where the pain kicked in….a recent book I purchased referred to “runners nipple”, an irritation of the nipple due to the friction of clothing and often complicated by sweating. Such a nice little quaint reference to something that may happen to people who run longer distances. I’ll give you the tip – it is no little quaint “irritation”. What sort of word is that? Irritation? Isn’t that when you have a mosquito in the same room at you at night time? Something which distracts – “vexation”.  Vexation my rear end, this was pain with a capital “P”. As readers would appreciate, men have a better tolerance for pain that our female counterparts, they only have to go through childbirth and things of that ilk, we suffer flu quietly and without complaint, when having to endure an ingrowing hair or cut or scratch we do so without a fuss, tattoos? Not an issue. So when I tell you a few layers of skin off the top of your nipple hurts, I am not exaggerating, to be honest it hurt a bit when I was walking home, it was just when I hopped into the hot shower that a scream was heard three suburbs away. Apparently strategically placed Band-Aids (a la Janet Jackson) will assist with this problem – what about the problem of having to rip the bloody things off? You think of that Mr Running Advice man? So now I’m reduced to having to apply Vaseline to sensitive areas before I go for a long run – I don’t even want to contemplate how many strange questions I’ll be getting as I prepare for my Sunday jogs. So when I next run for charity I’ll be able to honestly say “I gave my blood for this”.

How I got this far - or how I started

My first ever organised run

I can see a few people saying; “of course you can run a marathon, you’re running 10km events right now” well it wasn’t always like that. Two years ago I saw an event in the newspaper which was 5kms in distance and had a beginners programme attached. At the time I thought “I can do that, how hard can running 5kms be??” so I printed out a copy of the training regime, pinned it to the board beside the fridge and ticked off each training day as I did them.

Day 1 – Four lots of “jog 4 mins walk 2 mins” – that is like two laps of an oval, how hard could that be? It was IMPOSSIBLE. I am not exaggerating here, a four minute jog was too hard, so I did three and walked three. When finished, 24 minutes later, I hurt, felt nauseous and said “there is no way I’ll be able to run 5 kms”.

Day 2 is even harder 4 lots of jog 4 mins walk only 1 minute – I did four lots of jog 4 walk 2. I could feel the man boobs bouncing, the flab on the arms pumping up and down and even though I was lucky I was running at 6am in the dark so nobody could see me I was afraid I was going to be surrounded by the SWAT team as the neighbourhood were calling emergency services in a panic saying: “Darth Vader is loose in our local park I can hear him.”

Bottom line is I stuck to the programme, heading out into the cold and wet to the local park, for only three times a week with the biggest single commitment being 48 minutes, and fronted up for my first ever fun run at the age of 46, ready to tackle a five kilometre event. And 36 minutes 36 seconds later I crossed the line in 2,500^th place (from a field of 4,440).

I’d gone from a bloke who couldn’t run 750 metres to one who could go 5 kilometres, only slowly and with a walk break and the drink station mind you, but I’d crossed the line and was hooked. A goal was immediately set – I’m going to run 5kms in under 30 minutes. Two years later I still haven’t reached that goal!!!! I am resigned to the fact that I’m slow but I have the will power to go further so instead of going 6 minute k’s until I bust, I just keep adding distance.

For anyone who is starting out, there are numerous “apps” that can help you to get started, friends have used and swear by “Couch to 5k”, you can search the web for paper based ones (I used paper as at the time I had a Nokia brick, apps weren’t my thing!!!) or if you’re really desperate ask me and I’ll send you a copy of the one I used.

How I kept it up

There are a plethora of 5km events you can enter, each and every area in the world has them, just search the web. Personally I entered quite a few that raised funds for various charities, but found it a little hard without a training programme. I’d finished the 10 week guide, what did I do next? If an event was in four weeks time did I just repeat the last 4 weeks of the regime? That’s what I did, but as the training was for a beginner I was probably not improving in any way, just keeping things steady, I’d always be a beginner.

The biggest boon that I’ve become involved in is the local ParkRun a weekly 5 km free timed run for all comers. A friendly event that is organised by volunteers and takes place around Albert Park here in Melbourne. If you visit the general ParkRun website you’ll find that there are events in Australia, Denmark, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa the United Kingdom and the USA and if any of the others are half as good as my local one in Melbourne, you’ll be welcomed with open arms.

Even though there are guys running the event in 17 minutes or so, the atmosphere is friendly and encouraging and if it takes you 40 minutes to finish, there are still the volunteers at the finish line, cheering you on and giving you all the encouragement you need to come back and have another try the following week. How cool is that? A free event where people just enjoy themselves!!!

Of course I’ve run the Albert Park run at 8am on a Saturday 10 times now (and volunteered a further three) but am currently having a hiatus as it clashes with the kids Saturday morning soccer. But since I started running with them in January this year I’ve managed to  get my time down from 36.51 to 32.48 so that 30 minute goal I set two years ago is still a possibility.

Add to that the friendly advice I’ve received along the way and the encouragement and help has led me to the 10km event I ran last weekend, and of course my eventual journey towards a full marathon.

So the only real advice I can give is – give it a try – get yourself a pair of runners, find a basic training programme that suits and give it a go – who cares if it takes you 3 or even 6 months to eventually be able to jog 5 kms? You’ll find that nearly everyone you come across on your adventure will be encouraging, they were all beginners once too, and those small words to keep you going will do just that.

Run Melbourne and Dry July Update

A few may have seen these updates via email - but as promised (you asked for it) they are replicated here on my blog.

Run Melbourne

Post event Update 17 July when results were published

This magnificent event attracted more people than a Carlton vs Collingwood game of aerial ping pong and in their lycra shorts, charity driven t-shirts, long socks and well worn runners etc. the majority of the crowd were better dressed to boot. Being a realist I set myself up in the 60 min+ wave and gravitated towards a couple of fit looking ladies who were holding 65 min balloons. The experts in these matters tell me those ladies run 6 mins and 30 secs per kilometre for the whole distance and therefore you can pace yourself to finish in a target time. I wasn't dismayed by the fact that they had wrist bands showing each kilometre of speed for the whole ten (eg. 1 km in 6.30, two in 13, three in 19.30 etc.) as I wasn't chasing a future science partner but a time goal. Unfortunately I lost them before the 500 meter mark as the sweat in my eyes blurred my vision (it had nothing to with them being too far away - that's my story and I'm sticking to it). Anyways I did have a goal of running the whole distance (which I did bar a couple of walks through drink stations) and finishing in under 70 mins. My official time (published in "The Age" this morning) was 69.37 - not a breakneck pace but at the same time one that I am quite proud to have achieved - it was a full 3 mins 45 secs faster than my best 10 km run. Now onto my Half Marathon goal in October and I did have a 6.2km training run this morning (in the dark) so obviously pulled up fighting fit. You can still sponsor me using the logo on the right hand side of my blog,  or just visit there to see the great messages of support from the donors to date. Funds raised are for the Asthma Foundation of Victoria.

GPS of my run can be seen here.

 

9 July Update

A couple of months ago a guy who runs ultra-marathons (100km events) volunteered to help me train for the half marathon event in October and being slightly naive in these matters I took him up on his offer. After running in my weekly ParkRun around Albert Park on Saturday (it was 1 degree!!!!) he said "right we're going for a run tomorrow" - so at 10.45am I got the "wake up" sms message - "Hi I am doing a spa session at GESAC so will see you at Duncan McKinnon at 11.30am" - let me give you a tip, don't trust blokes who run 100km events for a hobby, they are a few snags short of a barbie (no offence intended George!!!). My training program said "70 min jog" my training partner thought that meant 70 mins solid jog, then "you've nearly hit 10 kms may as well run the last 200 metres"….."no point in finishing quarter of a lap in, may as well finish the whole lap"….so 10.7 kms later I do a slow slow slow walk home. If you notice I'm a tad ginger today that would be because I am!!!! Good news is I know I'll can run the 10km event next week in a heartbeat.

Dry July

Update as at 17/7

Over half way there now and last week it was a battle, this week it is a breeze - although the cold glass of Sav Blanc (condensation on glass and all) that my wife left on the dining room table on Sunday night as she went to get the pepper mill was nearly necked. I blame the dehydration for the hallucinatory thoughts I was having (see Run Melbourne update as to why I was dehydrated). I did fight back the urge and am still going strong 17 days in. I don't know if the lack of a beverage is playing havoc with my grip on reality, but I do have a vague recollection of saying something along the lines of "I might go another month" out loud sometime yesterday - it could have been a fleeting thought that didn't come out of my mouth though (any witnesses??? How much do you need - money is not an issue???) You can donate via the logo on the right of the blog- funds are for the Royal Melbourne Hospital Cancer patients.

9 July Update

Nine days in and it has honestly been a battle. The wife with a glass of wine most nights hasn't been too bad, but my niece's 21st on Saturday night was a tad boring sipping tonic water whilst these young kids were bouncing off walls. However that's not the least of it!!! To pick an event that swears you off the grog whilst in the middle of a Project implementation is probably not something I'd recommend, with the standard one week out panics, people blowing steam out of their ears because the process for getting hard copies of a document has changed, or arguing over whether the Deniliquin telephone exchange is in Victoria or NSW generally leads to one thing - a binge on a Friday night. Last Friday it was one tonic water and then a quick exit. Now I find out the wife's away with the kids for three days - what did that used to mean??? Poker, beer, sport and pizza, this time it will be a nice cup of herbal tea, a good book and maybe a yoga or meditation session!! Only three Friday nights to now conquer so will kill this one.